Natural landmarks

Natural Landmarks are features on planets that are unique, such as craters, temples, or crashed UFOs. They first appear in the Creature stage and stay there throughout the rest of the game. They are there to give the planet an identity.

Contents

Temples can only be found on your homeworld. They are the remnants of a long lost civilization that was previously on your planet. They stand out from hills and mountains, since they look similar to an Aztec temple. They also have rocks with symbols on them. They, like all other landmarks, first appear in the Creature stage. They are just eye-candy for the game and have no value. The temples can be made in the adventure creator.

Obelisks appear to be round, brown, stone Monoliths. They are some times found alongside temples, or alone. When alone, Obelisks will have a crop circle around them. The crop circle will have circles around small Obelisks, and lines connecting the circles to a big circle around a larger Obelisk. Some Obelisks have been found in trios, two small ones standing along a big one. Some others can be found in groups of five, usually surrounding temples.

A monolith, just like the ones you put down in space stage, but found on your home planet. Like Giant bones and temples, these are also useless, and cannot uplift you to space stage. However, considering your creature is seemingly the only creature that is evolving and achieving sentience, the Monolith might be uplifting you after all. Monoliths can be placed in the adventure creator. This is a very clear reference to the movie 2001: A space oddysey.

Crashed UFOs will appear on your homeworld in the creature stage after the "big crash" that makes other species flee, and are known to appear on only two planets. The first is your homeworld, and the second is a T-1 Planet, in a quest. In the Creature stage they will be surrounded by fossils, which could probably be the remains of the captain and the passengers. They hold no significant value in the other stages, they are just eye candy. Also, if the player listens carefully they can hear strange tones and an alien voice coming from the craft. And if by any chance it is a
Grox ship, purple smoke will come out into the air, but it will not affect your creature.

Asteroids that have crashed onto a planet; they are just eye-candy for the game, and do not have any value. At least one fossil is usually found in the crater made by the asteroid. Asteroids can be placed onto planets in the Adventure Creator.

These are giant bones left behind by a creature of massive proportion known as a Hyper Epic. Like Asteroids and Temples, they are just eye-candy. Hollow sounds of wind can be heard near these bones. It appears to be a Llama, which is one of the many references to them across many Maxis games. There is usually a skeleton inside the massive bones, perhaps eaten by the creature while it was alive, which you can dig up for parts. Curiously, the creature was at least twice the maximum size of a common Epic creature. They can be placed in the Adventure Creator. In the space stage when you visit a new game save planet, the skeleton is on the planet even before cell stage, as if the creature was on your planet and died before your creature steps on land.

Giant footprints, larger than Epic, which can only appear on your homeplanet. They appear to be linked with the giant bones. Sometimes there are bones inside the footprints, maybe stepped on and crushed by the giant creature. They sometimes also come out of the sea, across the land and back into the sea, as the owner seems too big to be troubled by the sea monster.

City Ruins are the remnants of a lost civilization. Some of the crumbling buildings look Earth-like. You can find City Ruins on a spice-less planet you must visit during the space tutorial. The civilization was destroyed by the Grox, and only security drones remained on the planet.

These include valleys, craters, mountains, volcanoes, rivers, arches, caves, mushroom shaped rocks, spice geysers, buttes, mesas, canyons and many more rock forms. All of these can be placed in the Adventure Creator.

Your vehicles can create or capture a harvesting station on the geyser for increased Sporebucks income. Other nations can also make and capture harvesting stations. There are Spice geysers on land as well as in the water, where Sea Vehicles can create stations.
When a nation is destroyed, the Spice Geysers owned by that nation become neutral, so that other nations can capture them.

Space Stage

Spice Trade is the main way to get money on this stage. Spice comes in red, yellow, blue, green, pink, purple and sometimes glitched in the form of White spice. Spice can be sold in trade routes and in trade menus with different space-faring empires, and pirates will try to steal your spice for their own uses. A colony cannot work without spice. Spice values regulate the economy for the whole galaxy. If the player steals Spice from other races, they will get a negative relationship boost.